Orange Mobile Dongle + quidco

Chris_Quartly

Am looking for a USB dongle as a stop-gap while I wait for broadband to be installed. I noticed that on quidco you can get £40 cashback for 30 day dongle deals, which is essentially free as the donlge is £30 + 10 for the 30-day contract. Just making sure this all seems right.

kwikbreaks

That's what it says but as it's a rolling contract you'd have to cancel as soon as you got it to avoid the next monthly charge. Doing that may mean they won't pay the cashback.

Snakeeyes21

I would avoid orange and quidco, they have a habbit of not paying out.

I would also avoid contract dongles with orange because the usage reporting isnt instant, its very very easy to go over and rack up a huge bill.

Argos have a 3 dongle for £19.99 that includes 1gb of usage, its payg so you dont have all the hassle of cancelling a contract, and racking up bills, i bought one today to replace my broken one.
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5490646/Trail/searchtext%3EBROADBAND.htm

Regardless of what some may say, 3 are the best network for mobile broadband.

kwikbreaks

Snakeeyes21 wrote: »

Regardless of what some may say, 3 are the best network for mobile broadband.

Very often the "best" mobile broadband is the one that actually works because in many locations that will be one and only one of them.

Quidco are reliable payers - I've had over £800 from them over the last couple of years or so and absolutely no non-payers.

chris1973

Regardless of what some may say, 3 are the best network for mobile broadband.

What you mean to say is that you are happy with it because currently you are in an area with decent coverage, however you can't vouch for every single village, town, city and postcode district in the entire United Kingdom because you personally haven't visited and tested it in them.

No doubt that *if* your existing satisfactory service was removed for an extended period, then i've no doubt you'd be quick to be on here complaining about it, so its probably not wise to tempt fate by belittling those who may have a genuine and provable complaint regarding 3's service / coverage or should I say, lack of it.

For those 3 customers without any 3G service, or where 3G has recently and mysteriously been switched off from their local area, all that remains is their roaming agreement with Orange 2G 'fall back' which gives around 2 - 3 kbps download speeds and a 53.6kbps connection. This is basically the mobile version of dial up, and is extremely - no, painfully slow and i'm speaking from personal experience.

'3' is certainly not the world of blue skies, fluffy white clouds and twittering birdies, as 'Snakeeyes21' would have you believe' - NO network is that perfect.

If you are comparing networks then this dedicated 3G forum is a good place to start for gathering feedback on the various networks

http://www.3g.co.uk/3GForum/


Orange, at least give a 14 day money back guarantee, and should you not be able to receive a usable signal in your location then you simply return the dongle for a refund and the contract will be cancelled.

Any other mobile broadband provider have enough faith and confidence in their network to boldly offer the same money back guarantee eh?...

Very often the "best" mobile broadband is the one that actually works

Very true, personally i'd just get an unlocked dongle (so you are not tied to 1 network) and a free sim from any of the 3G enabled providers. Download the free Mobile Partner software, put your sim in the dongle and then search your local area using the software to see all of the available networks. You wont be able to connect with no credit on the sim, but most will at least allow a network scan

Anything with (2G) next to them is slowwwwww dialup equiv and should be avoided, but anything with 3G next to it will give various levels of 'broadband' but will normally at least be a usable connection speed

Then simply make your choice based on which networks have (3G) listed beside them.

Should at least take some of the gamble out of it.

Also bear in mind that claims of speeds like 1.8, 2, 3.6, 7.2 mbps are unlikely to be the speeds that you will be getting! unless you are fortunate to be the only person using that mast. The speeds that the mast is running at is the total speed which is available and shared between ALL the current users connected to it.

This is a bit like sharing a conventional home broadband connection with a network of users, the more people connected and downloading from the same connection - the slower the 'share' that you will be getting.

So the download speed is very variable and is certainly not constant or consistant, even if you are one of the ones fortunate to be in a 3G area.

Masts get taken down / refused / moved and develop faults all of the time, so don't get complacent in the fact that what works fine today will still be there tomorrow.

Donnie

Actually 3 do have a money back guarantee, but of course that won't help if you have good service at the beginning and then it deteriorates.

chris1973

but of course that won't help if you have good service at the beginning and then it deteriorates.

This is true, I will be the first to admit that when it works and if you get a decent signal from a 3G mast, it works well and 3's mobile broadband service is usable

However its the rather large and variable question mark over getting and then maintaining a 3G signal

I had a perfectly good 3G signal and 3 service right up until the 12th May. In my case it didn't deteriorate over time it simply vanished as quickly as somebody throwing a switch, coincidentally during a Three maintenance 'update' scheduled for the very same day

This is exactly why I post a warning that not all of the network updates and roll outs will bring positive results to all customers on all occasions, service provision in previously well covered '3' areas can simply be removed or masts decommissioned without any notice or warning, as I have witnessed.

I've still not had any explanation from 3 as to why the service has vanished from my area and whether it is likely to come back, despite them having had a month to reply, judge for yourself the level of customer service from that.

bbounce

I'm starting to feel a bit sceptical about the cashback through Quidco for Orange Mobile broadband, as 9 months later I'm still waiting and all I've had so far is excuses.

It seems convenient that they can manage to record and pay out the little 8p's here and there, but that they don't seem to be able to pay out the £60 ones...

The mobile broadband itself has been great, though.